Job Discussion Forums

[Belmont]

Would anyone care to broach the subject of being a gay teacher in China? (or anywhere for that matter) A very large percentage of us EFLers is gay, yet no one ever mentions this. What is the attitude of the Chinese toward homosexuality?

[smalls]

I live in a smaller city, am not gay, but the subject has come up at school or in the classroom, and most of the people say that there really aren't any gay people in China. I have seen my fair share walking about (the holding hands can confuse who is really homosexual and who are just friends,) have been approached in bars, grabbed in the crouch (the little fellow almost lost his hand after that poor decision), and recently on a bus, a couple, traveling as father and son, were really lovers who asked me to join them, kindfully declined the offer. I think that, if a Chinese man is gay, he would feel more comfortable approaching a foreigner he believes is gay, because of the idea that foreigners are much more open about the idea, where in China it is still very in the closet. I dont know how a school would react, but could be negative, fear of the unknown and of course, China is pretty conservative.

[Jess_Laoshi]

Chinese people will tell you they don't accept homosexuality. That said, like smalls pointed out, guys go around arm in arm all the time without any sexual connotation implied, it's just about friendship, so you could walk about with a partner in the open and no one would really be the wiser. So I guess it wouldn't be that hard as a foreigner if you don't care that you're living in a society that would judge you harshly if they knew what you were up to. For a Chinese guy, it's a different story, he'd have to deal with the pressures of family and society. I have an idea that a good number of gay Chinese men probably marry women and try and carry on "normal" lives, as the society places a very high pressure on conformity.

[shmooj]

[Bill Shagley]

I am not gay but I have some gay friends in a small city. They are all sexually active with local partners. However, last week I met a new friend who was lesbian, and she could find no other like-minded ones among the Chinese. In my experience the gay ones seem to recognize each other. I have never heard of any gay-bashing, and this is due to both the discretion of my friends and the generally non-violent Chinese middle-class, with whom most foreigners tend to associate.

[Kurochan]

Due to my insomnia, this'll be a little rambly, but ...

I was thinking about this a while ago ... I think mainland and HK people mainly object to homosexuality because they see it as such a "minority" thing -- like, not many people do it, so it must be wrong. It's related to the whole conformity thing.

A big difference in China and HK is that there's not the violent feeling toward homosexuals that you find in the US. I don't really know why that is. You could say that it could be tied into the fact that a lot of bad feeling toward gays in the US is linked to religion, but then again, it's a spurious link, because the anti-homosexual parts of the bible are in amongst other prohibitions we ignore today, and the overall message of Jesus is of tolerance.

Maybe Americans' hatred of homosexuals has to do with the obsession we have with controlling what goes in and out of our bodies. Think of how anxious Americans are about bodily functions, particularly with defecating. If you asked an American what they would do if they could no longer control their bowels, they would probably say, "I'd commit suicide." Public vomiting is incredibly taboo in the West, or it wouldn't be humiliating -- we're embarrassed because we lost control of our bodies. We're even really worried about sweat, and our breath.

I think Chinese people don't have this kind of anxiety. They don't seem to find (especially) kids' pee and poop that horrible. It doesn't seem like vomiting in public is such a big thing either, or else everybody wouldn't be doing it.

Anyhow, for whatever reason, there's a big difference in attitude here. This came up in class once, and the guy students were talking about what they would do if a male friend kissed them (it happened to one boy). They just said they would be embarrassed and not know what to do. I think a lot of my American students would have said, "I'd have kicked his @ss!"

[Debalky]

Hi,
I saw a documentary the other night on the Pearl Channel (HK). It was investigating the gay population in HK, and admitted it was a sizable one. It also showed a group of protestors who stormed into the Catholic church in HK demanding a stop to discrimination, and a recognition of gay marriage. It was really interesting. They scuffled with the parishiners and got kicked out.
I wonder how an event like that would go over here in the mainland? If they stormed a government building with their demands, i bet things would get nut...

[woza17]

Before I came to China I was sent documents for my doctor to fill out .Two questions stood out, do you have the plague and are you homosexual. My doctor told me that 6% of the worlds population is gay as he was photocoping the form for his and his colleagues amusement.
Cai Hong

[Kurochan]

Come to think of it, during last year's medical exam, the doctor asked me, "Is your anus comfortable?" I thought about saying "Try it and see," but I didn't.

[Peter]

I met one of these chaps who make a good living from sending people to language schools overseas(That was pre SARS)

To me he is very obviously gay and I got to know him well(no, its not what you think)

What got me that he got hit on a lot by girls, who had obviously no idea.
Equally Chinese men never showed any inkling for what for me was so obvious;he himself felt quite"safe" from gay bashing.

As a person, he is immensely likeable in the first place

So it must be assumed that gays are an unrecognised minority

[Redfivestandingby]

Fascinating subject. Wrong forum? I think younger urban people are aware of homosexuality. In class it seems like Chinese generally are reluctant to discuss these matters with foreignors since they all want to maintain the morally superior image their government wants them to have.

I've also noticed there might be a difference between what we think of a gay guy as opposed to what Chinese think is gay. To me, it seems like the guys with the "cool" looks(funny hairstyle, clothes, etc...) look really gay when it could just be simply cool over here.

The gay bashing thing is interesting. I don't think they have this phenomenon over here since, according to them, they don't have gay people. How can they bash someone that doesn't exist? At least they don't do it which is better than what happens in the US.

[fat_chris]

Echoing what Redfivestandingby stated, what is perceived as "gay" in America seems to be cool and shuai on the Mainland: doing boy band routines (sing/dance) at talent shows, wearing spiked dyed hair and tight clothes, and working in a hip hair salon (legitimate, no red lights).

Is this indeed the Chinese liumang of the 21st century?

I heard there were a few gay bars in Chengdu and I have read there is an underground gay culture in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

A laowai teacher friend of mine spilled the beans on one of his classes and told his students that the normal way the boys carry on in China (holding hands and sitting on one another's lap) would be seen as the highest degree of q u e e r n e s s in the States. The students were horrified to hear this.

Unlike Redfivestandingby's finding, in my personal experiences, the Chinese are generally more open to foreigners, because we are outside of the cultural loop and generally trust us that we won't tell anybody. I've had a male teacher tell me he goes to the hongdengqu (probably was an open secret anyway) and a female teacher tell me she is a Christian (she swore me to secrecy and naturally I obliged).

If the "one in ten" line is indeed true, that would mean there are roughly 160,000,000 homosexuals in China.

Great topic, but isn't this more pertinent to China-Off-Topic?

It's all good.

[Kurochan]

Yeah -- the difference in perception of what is "gay" is really interesting here. Once a really masculine foreign woman told me that one of the reasons she likes China is that she doesn't have to worry about the ramifications of falling outside of the norms of femininity here. Like here, nobody cares, but if she were in the US, she'd be assumed to be gay.

I'd guess most big cities have gay bars, or as they're called, "comrade bars." I don't know about how you'd discreetly ask where they are, unless a Chinese homosexual opened up to you about his/her sexual orientation.

About the gay scene in Beijing -- there are a few gay filmmakers who come from the city. There's a woman who made a movie called "The Box," and there's this guy named Cui (Cui Zui-en, maybe?) who is openly gay and teaches at Beijing Normal University. He works with digital video, and I saw his film "Keep Cool and Don't Blush" at the HK International Film Festival.

[Roger]

I heard that the authorities in China sometimes put gays through electrotherapy to rid them of their perceived wrongness...

[Wolf]

Ooh. A one line post from Roger.

I've read that homosexuality was only recently no longer classified as an "abnormality."